These Promenades come from a man who, although he is the most hexagonal* historian in the United Kingdom, is still not recognised at his true worth south of the Channel. Right from the start of...
After the Second World War, an often-heard German excuse was that ‘we did not know.’ Even very senior Nazis, among them Goering and Speer, said that they had had no knowledge of...
The rise to prominence of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf has been one of the stranger chapters in recent world history. Within the space of a decade they have come to...
You knew that the Mercedes was the ultimate gay motor, but did you know that the Corvette was the poor gay’s Porsche? That the Alfa Romeo and the Datsun 280-Z were ‘bright, snappy...
This is not an easy book to read, even though it is written clearly and at times elegantly; its authors have swathed and encumbered their interpretations in so many reservations and second...
Britain lost three times as many combatant lives in the 1914 war as in the 1939 and, by the end of 1916, more than in all wars since the Plantaganets. (France lost twice as many as we did in the...
These four books deal with periods and problems fairly widely separated in space and time, and yet they have features which make consideration of them together worthwhile. The earliest is...
By ‘family structure’ many things may be intended. I shall take it here in two senses. First, in the sense of composition of the co-resident domestic group, as the historical...
The first three books are studies within the narrow élite of landed society in a small, rapidly modernising country – Scotland. They concern men who took for granted the perpetuation...
The first of these books is an academic study of the politics of the most famous political salon of early 19th-century England. The second is a collection of essays on famous literary salons,...
On 16 May 1940, when the German Army had just overwhelmed Holland, police swooped to arrest 3,000 men born in the Reich but now living in Britain. Some were billeted in the offices of the Tote...
Broadcasting began as entertainment and only later took education and information into its scope. But by 1925 the General Strike brought the BBC up against the Government, or rather against...
‘But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his...
Professor Cipolla’s new book puts one in mind of a Florentine espresso: minuscule in size; briefly stimulating in effect; and extortionate in price. At £7.50 for 85 pages of text his...
During recent decades a variety of very distinguished academics have taken time off from their learned pursuits to write imitation Agatha Christie detective stories, so when I first learned that...
This book, French readers were told one month before its publication last January, ‘is already the intellectual event of 1980’. As if in answer, the first printing of 9,000 copies of...
The French improved their lot at the end of the 18th century by chopping off their oppressors’ heads. Not long afterwards, the inhabitants of Glupov in Russia had a sadly different...
Erudite controversies serve a variety of purposes. On the lowest count they afford nutriment, unfailing even if meagre, to tired and traditional topics. Industry reaps easy reward since...